The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)(19)

“Help you?” I tensed, remembering the words of the fortune-teller in Chinatown. “Help you do what?”

“I don’t remember.”

I swore under my breath. Then we both looked up as a crack of thunder split the sky. The rain began to hit the ground, distant, but coming closer, like the feet of an approaching army. Kash pulled me back under the shop’s awning as the downpour swept over the sidewalk. Dahut only raised her ink-stained hand in farewell.

“Wait. Wait!”

But she walked off through the rain as steam rose from the hot concrete. I stared after her, still deeply curious—was she a Navigator too? Would she vanish as I watched? No, she only continued to the end of the block and turned the corner.

“I am torn,” Kash murmured as we huddled under the canvas. “I’d like to see where she’s going, but I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“You think she’s dangerous?”

“You think she isn’t?” He laughed. “What’s that saying? About Trojans and horses?”

“Greeks bearing gifts.”

“That’s the one. But Doubt is not a Greek name.”

“Dahut, I think,” I corrected automatically, softening the T and giving the word a slight emphasis on the second syllable. I tucked the map into my bag. “It’s the name of the princess from the fairy tale.”

“The tale of Ker-Ys?” He raised an eyebrow. “And what did she do at high tide?”

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to remember the story. “The sea gates were one of those utopian marvels. There were counterweights and springs and the like, so they opened when the tide went out, and closed when it came in. Of course, in any myth, there is always room for human error, so there was a key as well. The king kept it on a chain around his neck.”

“He should have thrown it into the water. Why don’t they ever do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he did and a frog brought it back in exchange for a kiss.” Kashmir cocked his head, and I waved my hand. “Different fairy tale. Never mind. Anyway, the story goes that one night, a red-bearded man—or a man dressed in red, the versions differ because of Celtic and Germanic influences on the—”

Kashmir interrupted me with an airy singsong. “Anyway—”

“Yes, sorry. Anyway . . .” I took a breath—where was I? “One night, he comes to the princess and asks her to run away with him. All she has to do is steal the key so they can lock the gates behind them and prevent the king from tracking them down. Of course, the strange man is the devil, and he uses the key to open the sea gates at high tide. Just as the city floods, a saint appears—”

“To save the town?”

“To denounce the princess for witchcraft. The town is doomed, I’m afraid.”

“What kind of fairy tale is this?” Kash muttered.

I gave him a twisted smile. “Fairy tales can be pretty horrible, when you think about it. There were likely a few survivors who spread the story. But the myth only mentions the king escaping on his magical horse—a black steed that could run over the waves.”

“And the princess?” Kash glanced down the sidewalk, but Dahut was long gone.

“She drowns,” I said softly. “Or maybe turns into a mermaid, depending again on the version.”

Kashmir lifted his hand, catching raindrops in his palm. “I suppose in this weather, either could happen.”

I laughed a little. “It does seem a little . . . far-fetched.”

“It seems we’ve met her before her story ends.”

“But even before the mermaid thing, the myth paints her as a . . .” I sorted words in my head, trying not to blush. “Well. You know how people talk about pretty women in power. They said she was . . . sinful.”

“You mean sex.”

The blush I’d been fighting won. “Yes. That’s what the legends say—that she took a new lover every night, or that she was a witch and slept with the devil to get her powers. It was an allegory meant to focus on the wicked ways of the pagans. But she didn’t seem . . .”

Kashmir grinned. “You can’t tell just by looking.”

My cheeks were hot. “She didn’t seem like a princess, is what I was going to say.”

“You can’t always tell that, either.”

“And the king’s name in the myth was Grandlon, not Crowhurst. Crowhurst is definitely not a king.”

“Then what is he?”

“Every sailor’s heard the story.” I dug my cell phone out of my back pocket. Typing with a thumb, the name autocompleted once I hit C. “Donald Crowhurst,” I read. “The Dark Horse of the Sea, they called him—very dramatic. Disappeared in 1969 while pretending to sail single-handedly around the world.”

“Pretending?”

“He was trying to win a contest.”

“Hmm. Money?”

“And fame. But he barely knew how to sail.” I looked at the picture accompanying the article; a pale man in his thirties with deep-set eyes and a boyish grin. “Still, he was brilliant. He spent months alone, sending false calculations back to London that showed him in the lead. He tricked everyone—the judges, the newspapers. Even his family. They were planning a hero’s welcome in England when his yacht was found abandoned in the Sargasso Sea, along with most of his logbooks. They were filled with wild ramblings and formulas for time travel. The last page showed a countdown to the end of some cosmic game. Everyone thought he’d gone mad from the strain and committed suicide, but . . .” A thrill kindled like a flame in my chest. “But he must have figured out how to Navigate instead.”